Renewable energy seminar, herb walk, Town Hall call, gardening and movies

It was an interesting and busy day today. Although I was supposed to be enjoying a day off I ended up working (sort of) to help a friend out. I went to Brewers' Hall in Aldermanbury Square to provide IT support for a breakfast seminar. What this really amounted to was making sure a Windows laptop and a Macbook could connect to a projector and then switch between them. I then got to sit through a very interesting seminar on the prospects for renewable energy under the new Conservative government. It was a very nice venue:

The speakers were Rt Hon Professor Charles Hendry (former Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change under David Cameron), Edward Bonham Carter (Vice Chairman of Jupiter Fund Management plc and Helena Bonham Carter's dad) and Professor Dr Reza Abhari (professor of energy technologies and the Director of Laboratory for Energy Conversion at ETH Zurich).

It was a real eye opener hearing how the Conservatives actually have a sensible policy on sustainable renewable energies, that wealth management companies have long term investments in ethical and beneficial technologies and how far we are from being able to rely properly on sustainable renewal energies. I'm not going to bore you to death with loads of details but Professor Dr Reza Abhari shared some fascinating statistics based on years and years worth of simulations run every 15 minutes for the whole of continental Europe. There is such a long way to go and people are the biggest problem. Interestingly the UK is second to none on potential for delivering sustainable renewable energy from wind power through onshore and offshore technologies. Unfortunately the resistance met from people (ie people like you and I in local communities) are the reason this isn't moving forward as much as it could do. That was real food for thought. We all LIKE the idea of sustainable renewable energies but aren't ready to accept what has to be done to get there.

Once the seminar was over I shot back to Eltham to meet up with Toni and Giselle (from Wicca Moon) to do a herb walk in Oxleas Wood as a precursor to the next module of our Wicca Moon School Of Witchery course. We did some great exercises that were real mind blowers. I'm aware of the joy of hugging trees but this nothing when compared to getting hugged by a tree! I wish I'd had my new camera with me as the view was stunning but I had to settle for my iPhone.

After the walk I managed to grab 30 minutes on the PS4 playing Batman: Arkham Knight while Toni went off to take Zoe to an appointment. Unfortunately I then ended up having to do some real work as I dialled into a Town Hall update that was being given to our department. No rest for the wicked LOL

....and talking of no rest, when Toni returned it was out into the back garden to mow the lawn and talk about plans on things we want to do out there.

The evening was then spent chilling out watching Men In Black followed by The Wedding Singer.